Video Shows Trench at Millennium Hollywood Project with No Fault Lines

Despite the state geologist predicting earlier this year that the Millennium Hollywood project will straddle a fault line, the developer has produced a video showing a recently dug trench showing no such fault.

The L.A. City Council approved the project, two 30-plus-story skyscrapers sandwiching the historic 13-story Capitol Records building, in July 2013. One building will stand 35 stories tall and the other 39 stories, and they will include more than 400 residential units and 200 luxury hotel rooms, as well as office space, restaurants and a fitness club.

Opponents feared developers hid the existence of a fault line as they went through the permitting process. Their concerns were buoyed when state geologists plotted the path of the Hollywood Fault along the Hollywood Hills, showing the Millennium Hollywood project site atop the fault traces.

If you can get past the cheesy music, you’ll see geotechnical consultant Mike Reader of Group Delta talking with “science communicator” Cara Santa Maria about the subsurface investigation he oversaw at the trench.

Still, critics take issue with the Group Delta findings that were first included in a letter to the Mining and Geology Board.

“If you look at the map Group Delta presented, you will see they avoided the southerly trace area where they would have possibly found the fault,” says the website, Stop the Millennium Hollywood.